Sunday, February 19, 2012

A rig for £30 - the Baofeng UV-3R 144/433MHz dualbander

I’d had the chance to play with one of the
Baofeng UV-3Rs a few weeks ago and quite liked it. Like most people, I’d seen
them advertised in the UK amateur radio press at around £50. On e-bay you can
get them for £20 plus £10 postage. I thought I’d plump for one of those and see
what happened.

The radio arrived in about 8 days from ‘RadioBanker’
in Hong Kong, beaufifully packaged and with some nice stamps! It was neatly
boxed and pleasingly presented. The box includes the transceiver, the battery, VHF
antenna and UHF antennas , power charger and leads as well as an earpiece and
microphone. Assembly was straightforward and just required the battery to be
clipped into the body of the transceiver and the cover slid down and clipped in
place. I’d opted for the jaunty blue model!

The rig fits neatly into the hand. Sorry about the grubby fingers - I'd been digging the garden!

Because I had put the battery into the
transceiver, I did not need to use the ‘shell’ supplied for charging the
battery and just plugged the lead from charger into the DC socket on the side
of the rig and set it to charge overnight. The charger supplied was a wall-wart
designed for UK 3-pin plugs, unlike some suppliers who, I understand ship a US
type charger and adapter.

I’ve found that battery life was good. Not
quite ‘charge and forget’ like some of the larger handhelds and bigger battery
capacity, but certainly good for several
days operation during walks and monitoring whilst I was in the house –
the battery life of 10 hours quoted by the manufacturer seems realistic.

The build quality of the rig is good. Clearly
it’s not as good as rigs from the mainstream manufacturers (which are, after
all, several times the price) and perhaps not quite as good as the Wouxun
models. But it is entirely satisfactory. The ‘L/R’ button on the side of the
rig as well as the p.t.t. button were absolutely fine but were of the type that
made you wonder how they would last over time. The rig fitted nicely in my hand
and also in my coat pocket, so ideal for taking out on a walk.

The manual? I should probably start by saying
that if you are the sort of person that likes things to be ‘just so’ and for
the manual to guide you effortlessly through the operation of the rig, then
this is not the rig for you. The manual is one of the poorest that I have read.
To me at least, it isn’t logically organised.

The ‘Getting Started’ section covers switching
the rig on, adjusting the volume and that’s it. Then it’s onto the ‘Advanced
operation’ section which is just a description, sometimes clearer than others,
of the different menu items. One of the more mysterious items reads (sic),
“ELAYM (Repeater Sound Response). The UV-3R comes with the Repeater Sound
Response feature. When the feature is activated, the handheld transceiver will
hear the sound from the repeater, that means the handheld transceiver is
working via the repeater’. What?! Certainly the intent wasn’t clear to me. This
is probably the most mysterious and cryptic description in the manual, but it
is by no means unique. Incidentally, the ELAYM feature appears to be intended
to suppress K tones from a repeater.

It all gets better from there. If you are
happy to accept the manual as it is and work with the information provided you should
soon get to grips with the radio. For example, though the manual says how to
store frequencies in the memories, it doesn’t tell you how to recall them, but
with some (not too much) experimentation, I discovered how to do this.

Programming the rig with repeater and simplex
frequencies is reasonably straightforward once you master the menu system. I found programming my most used frequencies into
memory was the easiest way to use the rig, because the rig didn’t automatically
sense repeater channels and apply repeater shift as some do. Not wanting to be
fiddling around with changing the radio’s menu items with cold hands on a walk,
then setting up the memories seemed to be the most convenient solution. Programming
software and a USB lead

is available, though I’ve not taken the plunge yet (it would double the cost of the rig!)

Having set up the rig with the local repeaters
and a few simplex channels I made some experiments from within our house. The
antenna on the UV-3R is quite small and I found that I couldn’t hear the 144MHz
repeaters GB3WH and GB3RD (both about 15 miles distant) as well as on a ‘full
size’ handheld such as my Icom E-92, but I could still get into them if I chose
my spot. Likewise on 433MHz, GB3TD at Swindon could be heard weakly and
accessed from the first floor of our house. So, if you are planning to use one
of these handhelds inside your house to access repeaters or work local
stations, you’ll probably need to be within 5 to 10 miles of them.

However, I was more interested in how the rig
would perform when I was out for a walk in the Oxfordshire countryside. I
ventured to our allotment which just happens to be on the ridge of the hills
with a clear take off from west, through north to the north east. The 430MHz
repeater GB3UK on Cleeve Hill in the Cotswolds is about 40 miles distant and I
tried a call through it using the UV-3R. To my slight surprise, the repeater
heard me easily and I put a call through it. Richard, G4ERPwas
operating mobile on horseback and responded to my call, as did Mike, G3TSO.
Both Richard and Mike were able to confirm that the audio from the rig was
good, although the deviation was just slightly low but in general the quality
of my transmission was excellent. I could easily access the GB3DI repeater at
Harwell and worked John G6LNU at Wantage. Rob G4XUT heard me on GB3TD and we
QSYed to simplex and made a nice contact with me on the footbridge over the
A420 to the south of our village and Rob at home – a distance of around 20
miles. Not bad for 2W and a small antenna! Experiments showed that the
speaker/mike gave a better audio level than the internal microphone.

One
issue discovered at this stage was the fact that even at bare minimum, the
volume is quite loud. Sufficiently loud that if the rig is in your pocket and
someone pops up on a repeater, their voice may be loud enough to surprise your
walking companions or passers-by! Various modifications for this have been
mooted from modifying the board to sticking some tape over the speaker. The
supplied earpiece/microphone proves quite beneficial from this point of view
too – the lowest volume setting seemed quite bearable through the earphone.

The UV-3R also features the capability to
listen to F.M. broadcast radio, which the manual stated covered 87 to 108MHz.
Somewhat intriguingly, when I first switched to F.M., it displayed a frequency
of 65MHz! The tuning range appeared to be 65 to 108MHz for wideband F.M.. The
tuning step is 100khz – so I was unable to tune to 70.450MHz (UK 70MHz F.M.
calling frequency). However, I did verify
that I could receive my own transmission on 70MHz! Given that the receiver is
set up for wideband F.M. and amateur transmissions are narrowband F.M., this
will be of limited use, but it may prove a useful facility. Also, in Es season,
it may provide the ability to listen to Eastern European broadcast F.M. –
though presumably the small antenna may prove something of a handicap. The F.M.
feature does what it is supposed to do, receive F.M. radio stations.
Sensitivity seemed reasonable and I was easily able to receive our favourite
local radio station from Oxford, Jack FM. I enjoyed that when a station popped
up on the repeater that I was monitoring = even if I was listening to F.M., the
rig would switch over to V.H.F./U.H.F..

A more serious, well documented issue with the
UV-3R is that the second harmonic of the V.H.F. transmitter is not well
suppressed and is only around 30dB down. Since I was planning to use the rig on
70cms, I didn’t really care. However, Steve G1KQH kindly provided a link to a site where a mod to improve the VHF performance is available.

I enjoy having the UV-3R around. It is
perfectly sized to fit in a pocket to take with you when you are out for a walkto
the shops or on a hill. Good things about the rig are value for money, wideband
receive coverage and excellent 433MHz performance. On the downside, the manual
was very poor, especially for a beginner and the second harmonic of the V.H.F.
transmitter gives cause for concern. Neutral points, but ones to be aware of,
include relatively low power and small antenna will restrict the range and
performance of the rig, balanced by reasonable battery life and easy
portability.

For £30, I think this represents exceptional
value – I’m delighted. And you can also get the rig in red, yellow, camouflage
as well as regular black!

6 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Nice review Tim. The 2nd harmonic for tx into WH (145.05 times 2) puts it at 290.1 Mhz, in the Military airband. Hmmmmm I dont want to bring down an aircraft using Brize !! But 2 Watts minus the 20 db must be flea power.

Have you done a review of the Wouxun so I oculd compare?73Richard G4MUF

A very interesting review, and very pertinent. I also have one of these little rigs, purchased nearly a year ago in prep for my foundation licence. I couldn't agree more about the so called instruction book; for anybody with little or no experience of setting up a programmable (amateur) radio, as opposed to the broadcast band unit in the car or military 'point & click' stuff this is a total nightmare!!! I spent three days trying to figure out certain aspects of the set up for 2m repeater use, became very dishearten with it all and almost chucked it in a draw and forgot about it - chalking it down to experience. However, my nature is not to allow anything to beat me so I persevered, having had a good look around the net as well. I found that in some cases the hand book was completely wrong and the instructions to push this button combined with another did not have the desired effect - much fiddling later I had a set of home made notes that I now refer to if I want to mod the radio settings. As for performance - absolutely brilliant on 2m - I've not had the chance to use it on 70cms as there is very little activity around here (Exeter). Battery performance on my unit is excellent, I spent a pleasant hour or more the other night in the a beer garden of my local rag chewing with another amateur on simplex and he was impressed not only by the quality of the audio etc. but how long the battery seemed to last!!! He headed off for cocoa at 2200hrs and the unit was still showing a charge of over 3/4 full - which mightily impressed me as well!

These units have now been well and truly superseded by the UR-V5 etc. which is a bit of shame because if they had a better written handbook then it would be the 'definitive' starter unit for Foundation licence holders, doing everything you could want in one small, neat and more importantly inexpensive package.

One small gripe - I took the plunge because I like this radio, and purchased both a speaker/mike and the programming cable - neither work properly!!! Annoying considering that they cost, together, as much as the radio! The mike will key the radio up once, then refuses to do so again??? I found some references to this problem on the net and it seems to be a software fault on early units like mine.... There is no update for this so be aware if you're thinking of getting hold of a secondhand one. The programming software came on a blank commercial CD - an obvious copy, the USB to radio cable looked the business but every PC I've plugged it into, having installed the drives refuses to 'see' the radio when attached. According to a colleague at Exeter Amateur Radio Society this is to do with the fake chips the manufacturers have used in the lead. Apparently windows interrogates the interface built into the USB plug, detects the fake and refused to connect. My colleague tells me I can download a driver to overcome this problem, but having figured out eventually how the whole thing works for myself don't feel the need to do that right now.